Test or Guess: Why Continuity Plans Fail When You Need Them Most

A continuity plan that lives in a binder but has never been tested is a liability—not a safeguard. In this post, we examine recent real-world events that highlight the difference between theoretical resilience and proven readiness.

Known Failures and Lessons Learned

CrowdStrike Update Causes Global IT Outage (July 2024)

A defective update from cybersecurity vendor CrowdStrike triggered widespread Windows system crashes across industries worldwide. Over 4,000 flights were canceled, hospitals reported outages, and corporate operations ground to a halt. The incident underscored the dangers of update dependencies and highlighted the ripple effects when recovery procedures are not immediately actionable.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Outage (December 2021)

An internal network congestion issue within AWS’s US-East-1 region caused cascading service failures across companies that rely on AWS—including Netflix, Amazon itself, and major productivity platforms. The multi-hour outage showed how a lack of redundancy testing can paralyze businesses that assume cloud always equals continuity.

What Testing Reveals That Planning Doesn’t

• Gaps in documentation and process handoffs
• Whether employees know their roles during an incident
• If communication plans actually function under stress
• Whether your backups restore properly, completely, and fast

Start Small, Scale Smart

You don’t need a full-scale simulation to begin:

• Run a tabletop exercise
• Simulate a single-system outage
• Validate backup recovery speed on one core application

Make it routine. Make it repeatable. And treat testing as the dress rehearsal your business needs to survive the real show.

Wrapping the Series

In our final post, we’ll tie it all together in “Resilient by Design: Turning Continuity into Competitive Advantage” — showing how to position business continuity as a strategic differentiator, not just a safety net.